Mistress Obsidian stared into her vision bowl with disbelief and growing rage. How had Christopher Blue been overpowered by a seer? She’d imbued him with the power of dark matter! The strongest, most volatile power a human could possess! And how had Malcolm Malice let her down so spectacularly? He was her best student! All they’d had to do was destroy Oliver Blue so he could not rescue the Orb of Kandra. Yet they’d completely failed, getting caught up in petty squabbling amongst themselves.
She should never have entrusted such an important task to them.
She stood up from the table, furious—with them, with herself for putting her faith in them—and stormed over to the window.
Across the playing fields her students worked on their archery practice. To think she’d let them all down. That Amethyst school was still standing, still lording it over the entire seer community, denying them their rightful position as masters over the world and the mortals within it.
His saccharine agenda made Mistress Obsidian sick! Protect humans? Why! When seers were by far the more extraordinary group? When the universe had gifted them with such incredible powers? The universe clearly wanted them in charge and yet Professor Amethyst and his school of do-gooders insisted on protecting mortals!
Anger made her head swim. She grabbed the ledge and took deep, ragged breaths.
Her gaze fell then to the glass cabinet to her left. Inside was the Obsidian knife. She’d learned enough from studying the vision bowl that overuse of the knife could be disastrous. She still struggled to shake the image of her counterpart in another timeline imploding after stabbing the Orb of Kandra. It was enough to make her extremely cautious. And she’d already used it once, to give Christopher Blue his powers. Just look how that had turned out!
But still, she found herself reaching for the knife as if drawn to its dark power. She took it gently from the cabinet and turned it in her hands, deliberating. Her mind went back and forth, back and forth. Perhaps now was the time to be decisive. Oliver had the Orb but he was still stuck in 1690. He’d not yet returned it to its plinth in the sixth dimension. There was still time to win this, with a little help from the dark world…
Mistress Obsidian forced away the image of her parallel self dying from her mind. She raised the knife above her head, its tip to the sky, and sliced down as if through sponge cake. She made a slice all the way from the height of her head down to the floor. Then she took her hands and peeled back the edges of the universe. She stepped inside.
The space where she now stood was very dark and very cold. A place between time. There was no sound. Just a dark expanse of nothing.
Mistress Obsidian glanced about her, searching for what she was here to fetch. Then, slowly, small blue orbs began to light up around her. It was the eyes of rogues waking from their slumber.
“The dark army,” she announced. “I call on you.”
More and more eyes began to open, glowing their peculiar blue light into the blackness.
Then in a sudden whoosh like the force of a tornado, the rogues flew for the gap she’d made in the fabric of time.
Mistress Obsidian struggled for breath as the wind whipped through her hair. Her cloak flew out behind her. The rogues were racing through the slit so fast they became a blur of black and shimmering blue.
She grasped the edges of the dimensional fabric, trying to steady herself. Then a wicked smile played across her lips. A laugh escaped from between them. She’d really done it. She’d really unleashed the dark army onto the world.
“Just try and stop me now!” she screamed into the void.